By BRUSSELS. Oct 27 (Interfax-Ukraine) – President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen states that work on the 12th package of sanctions, which will include Russian diamonds, continues, as well as work on the use of frozen Russian assets.
She announced this on Friday in Brussels at a press conference at the end of a two-day meeting of the European Council.
“We are in the process of preparing the 12th package of sanctions, now we are in the consultations with the member states, in particular, we are looking into how to cut the remaining revenues that Russia draws from the export of diamonds to Europe and its partners, this would be done in very close cooperation with our G7 partners, and we continue to make sure that our existing sanctions are properly implemented and effectively enforced,” she said.
Von der Leyen also raised the issue of Russia’s immobilized assets in the European Union. “This was also a point of discussion. We all recall that it was in March last year that we took collectively the important political decision to immobilize Russian sovereign assets. The value of these sovereign assets stands at EUR 211 billion, and politically we agreed that ultimately Russia must pay for the long-term reconstruction of Ukraine,” the President of the European Commission said.
She also recalled that a discussion between finance ministers took place not long ago in Marrakesh, which allowed for good progress on basic principles, so the next step would be a real proposal. “We are currently working on a proposal to initially focus on so-called windfall profits, in other words, we will present a proposal to find a way to how use the proceeds from those assets that are currently benefiting a limited number of financial institutions in the European Union. These windfall profits are already quite substantial, and the idea is to pull them and then to channel them through the EU budget to Ukraine and the reconstruction of Ukraine,” von der Leyen detailed.
